Church sponsors handgun class

A Texas Baptist church has found an unconventional community-service opportunity as interest grows in self-defense and protecting families.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist church in Texas is offering a concealed handgun license class March 2 as a community service.

“This is an opportunity to meet a real need in our county,” Brad Foster, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Dumas, Texas, explained in the church newsletter. Foster, a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary who has been at the church 13 years, described the event as part of a larger effort to break out of old traditions in order “to better represent the Lord Jesus through new and fresh wineskins.”

The 10-hour class taught by a state-certified instructor will touch on how to safely use and carry firearms. Foster told the Amarillo Globe News that the church isn’t making a political statement, “except we don’t mind being associated with being in support of the Second Amendment.”

Foster said the church has “always attempted to think outside the box as far as what the needs of the community are,” and firearms training fits with that philosophy.

“From the biblical perspective, we are especially interested as men to be protectors of innocents,” Foster said. “Jesus has a special place in his heart for children and innocents, and that’s an important role we have to play.”